Visa announced that it has acquired the Rambus payments and ticketing lines of business. Likely the most compelling part of this acquisition is that Rambus has implemented tokenization on other payment networks such as the ACH.

One capability of a tokenization service is that it can be used to concatenate two different namespaces. For example, a token formatted to operate on the Visa card network could be connected in the token vault to another token that is implemented in the format required to support the ACH. With that in place, a payment transaction could, in theory, be initiated on the card network and settled to an account on ACH, or for that matter over the Faster Payment rails. So where Mastercard has become active in external payment networks through acquisitions, so too may Visa. Below is an excerpt from an article covering the announcement:

“Visa has announced it is to buy Rambus’ payments and ticketing businesses, to ‘expand enhanced security benefits of tokenization beyond Visa cards to any type of transaction, including domestic card networks, account-based and real-time payments systems.’

“Rambus’ payments and ticketing business was formed in January 2016 when the Silicon Valley-based IP and chip provider acquired Bell ID and ticketing specialist Ecebs.

“’The combination of Visa’s network tokenization capabilities with the local and account tokenization technology of Rambus will facilitate safer, more secure payments across all forms of global commerce,’ the payments network says.

“’Visa is one of the industry leaders in tokenization technology which replaces sensitive payment information with a unique identifier, or ‘token’, to make digital payments safer.

“’Today, Visa offers these capabilities through Visa Token Service for card-based payments on the Visa network. Rambus’ token technology will enable Visa to extend the security and convenience of tokenization to all types of transactions beyond Visa cards, including those on domestic card networks, account-based and real-time payments systems.’

“’Facilitating safer, more secure digital transactions is core to Visa’s brand promise and central to growing electronic payments for everyone, everywhere. As the way people and businesses pay and get paid continues to evolve, the addition of Rambus’ technology will allow us to deliver greater security beyond the card to support more transactions, payments systems and participants,’ TS Anil, global head of payment products and platforms at Visa, explains.

“Going forward, we will apply these expanded capabilities, expertise and scale to help further all forms of global commerce.”